from the questions,-questions dept

The HBO series Game of Thrones always seems to be at the center of the piracy debate. The show's mass popularity certainly has something to do with that (popular content is almost always at the top of various infringement lists), but a big part of it is that, even for people willing to pay for the show, the fact that the only way to do so is to get an expensive cable subscription is a big part of the problem. In fact, there's some reason to suggest that the vast amount of piracy around Game of Thrones has been a key part of its success -- something that many folks associated with the show will admit in candid moments before being told by corporate bosses to shut up.

And while the legacy entertainment industry continues to take a "zero tolerance" approach to infringement, by pretending that their various (extremely limited) online services are good enough, the simple truth is that it's ridiculously expensive for folks who just want to watch Game of Thrones online. The good folks at TorrentFreak took a look at what it would cost in a bunch of different countries to watch the authorized version of the show if you were a cord cutter who wasn't interested in anything else in a cable subscription. The Australian result may be the most shocking:

When we look at the packages offered on the website the cheapest option appears to be the movie and drama combo, which costs $74 AUD (~ 70 USD) per month. However, the minimum subscription term is six months, which with the added costs adds up to $520 AUD (~ 590 USD). Assuming that someone’s only interested in watching Game of Thrones, an Australian fan will have to pay $52 AUD (~ 49 USD) per episode, which is rather expensive

That's a bit of an understatement. And this is especially interesting, given that the US ambassador and the MPAA have repeatedly pointed to Game of Thrones piracy as a top priority that the Australian government needs to "fix." Perhaps, instead, there should be a focus on making it so that each episode is actually reasonably affordable. The situation, of course, is equally ridiculous in most other countries that TorrentFreak explored. And, yes, as HBO has said over and over again, it has good business reasons for doing this (it makes a ton of money from cable and satellite companies for each subscriber -- likely more than they'd pay individually). But the end result is that it should hardly be surprising that plenty of people choose an alternative route -- and it shouldn't be something that has US ambassadors up in arms.

from the HBO-go-HBO-went dept

Hey, HBO, can we talk for a moment? It won't take long, it's just that we're all worried about you. We want you to know that we really appreciate this new stance you've been slowly but surely taking on internet streaming. We really appreciate that you're finally starting to come around on unleashing your HBO Go product to the masses, even if they don't pay for your cable product. We know you're scared about this big transition in your life, especially when you've had so much trepidation about it in the past.

Maturing is scary and difficult, I know, but you have to be prepared for the changes. You're going to be awkward for a while, you might get hair in places you've never had it before, and you won't understand what's happening to you. But if you're going to be a big boy digital provider, you can't crap the bed when the show that's making you the most relevant at the moment is in such high demand.

Some "True Detective" fans hoping to watch the season finale on HBO's streaming service were left hanging Sunday as the site experienced technical problems. Instead of watching the show on HBO Go, some viewers were left looking at a stalled loading screen. Frustrated viewers took to Twitter to complain about delays and being unable to access the show.

One user tweeted, "My HBO Go is just a spinning wheel of non-loading hopelessness and despair." Another wrote, "SOS: @HBO Go is not working. This is anything but okay. Someone give me answers."

All your friends want is for you to be everything you can be, if you'd just put in the effort. You're playing with the grownups now, so it's time to put the that little kid backpack away and buy a briefcase. If you're ever going to be the streaming service you should be, the one that will net you tons of customers and money, it's time to bolster the streaming service so that it can handle peak loads. True Detective was great, but that doesn't matter if nobody can, you know, watch it. And the first step in fixing a problem is admitting you have one.

HBO Go, in a tweet on Sunday night, said: "Due to overwhelmingly popular demand for #TrueDetective, we've been made aware of an issue affecting some users. Please try again soon." In a statement Monday, the company said the site had experienced "an excessive amount of traffic" and that the service was now "back to normal."

Your service being back to normal because nobody is watching it any longer isn't exactly an accomplishment. The days of getting stars next to your name for attendance, or trophies for participating, are over. Make this thing work reliably and you'll have all the friends and fans you could ever want, but it's time to grow up.

from the starting-to-realize dept

Because it's so popular -- and so pirated (in part because you can't view it legally online if you're not an HBO subscriber via cable/satellite) -- the question of Game of Thrones and piracy is a story that just never dies. Many people have argued that it's ridiculous that there are no legal options for cord cutters, and that just leads to more infringement -- and, in turn, that's resulted in people arguing that a good part of the show's popularity is likely due to infringement. Of course, for those associated directly with the show, it seems like they're a bit conflicted about this. Director David Petrarca first said that unauthorized downloads were great because they added to the cultural buzz that made the show thrive... and once that story got attention, he quickly walked it back, suddenly saying he was opposed to unauthorized watching. And, bizarrely, we've even seen the US ambassador to Australia argue that stopping infringement of Game of Thrones is a major priority.

Yes, in response to a question about whether the network kinda-sorta regards the extensive theft of HBO's flagship show, Game of Thrones, as a compliment, Bewkes said, "I have to admit it, I think you're right." The much-discussed fantasy series is HBO's most popular, and "if you go to people who are watching it without subs, it's a tremendous word-of-mouth thing," the exec told investors. "We've been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you're right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world," he said. "That's better than an Emmy."

Of course, plenty of people have been pointing out for years and years and years that infringement is a signal of unmet demand, so it's nice to see them catching up. Of course, now let's see if Time Warner still backs the next ridiculous and draconian copyright enforcement expansion...

"Right now we have the right model," [HBO Chief Executive Richard] Plepler told Reuters on Wednesday evening at the Season 3 premiere of HBO's hit TV show "Game of Thrones." "Maybe HBO GO, with our broadband partners, could evolve."

...

Plepler said late Wednesday that HBO GO could be packaged with a monthly Internet service, in partnership with broadband providers, reducing the cost.

Customers could pay $50 a month for their broadband Internet and an extra $10 or $15 for HBO to be packaged in with that service, for a total of $60 or $65 per month, Plepler explained.

"We would have to make the math work," he added.

The folks at HBO seem intent on letting the world know that they know these demands exist—they're not stupid or blind, they just happen to be making a lot of money with things the way they are, thank you very much. But while there's often a lot of sense to the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it mentality, the record and film industries serve as illustrative examples of why it may not be a great approach for content companies faced with new technologies. It's easier to experiment when you've got money, and HBO could be using these successful times to start piloting and ultimately launching an online-only service that is superior to the competition, both legitimate and otherwise. If they wait until the growing cable-cutter movement actually necessitates the shift, they could end up like those other industries—dragging their heels until someone else steps in to do the hard work (iTunes, Netflix), or offering ersatz late-to-the-game products of their own (Ultraviolet, Hulu).

Still, it's good to know that it's occurred to them. As for the idea of bundling it with ISP subscriptions, while it makes less sense than offering something to everyone who wants it, it's actually not a bad first step for a company that relies so heavily on partnerships with cable providers (who also happen to be ISPs). However, depending on how such a plan was implemented, it could raise a lot of issues around net neutrality, and could lead to a bundling problem that's just as bad as exists now with cable—especially if it's successful at first, and the providers try to pile on with all kinds of other content subscriptions. Since HBO is obviously going to take its sweet time with any online-only strategy, hopefully it at least realizes that solving the cord-cutting problem is a better goal than renewing and postponing it.

from the ah,-right dept

We've had a number of stories concerning the hit TV show Game of Thrones and the issue of people downloading unauthorized copies of the show. Due to a variety of reasons mostly centered around HBO's cable relationships, HBO has not made the show available online, for the most part, unless you already have a cable TV subscription that includes HBO. The math here is a bit silly (due to the ridiculous nature of how pay TV works these days), but HBO more or less has done the math that says it's better off losing out on people who are willing to pay and who will inevitably infringe instead, by not pissing off the pay TV folks who pay them a much bigger lump sum. I think this is short sighted, because while the math works out today, the trend is in the wrong direction, and if HBO doesn't get in front of that trend, by the time the math "catches up," they could be in a lot of trouble.

According to Jeff Cusson, HBO’s senior vice president of corporate affairs, “We think the key to combating piracy is to make content like Game of Thrones available worldwide within the smallest window possible…to 176 territories within the week of the U.S. premiere.”

Cusson said, “HBO is also rolling out HBO Go internationally,” which means many viewers in Europe, Latin America, and in other locations like Hong Kong can watch Game of Thrones at their leisure on their iPad/iPhone, Roku, Xbox 360s, their Android devices, and selected Samsung Smart HDTVs.

First off, it's great that they recognize that the key is making the show more widely available. That's a step up from blaming fans who want to see the show but can't. Of course, it's still ridiculous that HBO Go can't work on other TVs other than "selected Samsung" TVs. But... none of this seems to apply to the US.

When pressed on doing more in the US, Cusson begins answering by not answering.

When asked about the prevalence of piracy in America, Cusson said, “We utilized various tools to protect our copyright in 2012.” I countered that they didn’t work, because it was still the most downloaded show that year. Cusson responded, “We think the success of our business shows that our approach is relatively successful.”

Of course, at one level, he's absolutely right. There's no reason to "stop" piracy if it's not actually harming the show (and, in fact, may very well be helping it). But, at some point, HBO is going to need to realize that it has to make the jump to providing authorized access to Americans who don't have a traditional cable connection. And the longer they wait, the harder it becomes to get people to invest in HBO, because they'll get used to unauthorized alternatives.

from the getting-it dept

You know, sometimes content creators can be really confusing. Take Game Of Thrones director David Petrarca, for instance. Remember early last year when we mentioned that the show was on track to become the most pirated television show of 2012? And how the success of the show might actually be a result of piracy, rather than its cause?

Panel mediator Rosemary Neill noted Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of 2012 and that 10 per cent of the downloads came from Australia. But Petrarca shrugged and said the illegal downloads did not matter because such shows thrived on "cultural buzz" and capitalised on the social commentary they generated.

"That's how they survive," he told the crowd gathered at the University of Western Australia.

Yes, in addition to allowing late-comers to catch up on episodes in preparation for new seasons, piracy helps keep the show in the societal bloodstream, keeps the buzz going, and generally creates more excitement and awareness of the product as a whole. If HBO could manage to provide a more innovative method for delivering the show to those that want it, likely the boon could be even greater. Still, Petrarca noted that HBO is doing well with their subscriber base.

He said HBO alone had 26 million subscribers in the US and 60 million worldwide, which meant there was plenty of money filtering in and allowing the channel to produce high quality content despite any illegal downloading.

While this all sounds reasonable, I wouldn't want to be accused of not presenting the other side of the argument on whether or not piracy helps or hurts this sort of media. So, here to present a rebuttal to David Petrarca... is David Petrarca. He recently had a Twitter exchange with our own Glyn Moody, including these highlights.

I am 100% against illegal downloading. I said that downloading creates buzz but def am NOT in support of illegal downloads. The issue is a distribution system that gets content to viewers legally in a timely manner. People want to pay if made available.

While it should be noted that he certainly isn't being belligerent here, and he in fact notes that if a great distribution option is available fans will pay for content, it's difficult to square the first part of this statement with what he said in the article. Remember, he was specifically responding to a question about piracy (not authorized downloads) and then responded that it helped create social buzz for shows like his and "that's how they survive." But he is "NOT in support of illegal downloads?" I think I understand this to mean that he simply thinks the ideal solution is the kind of distribution platform that would drive nearly everyone away from piracy, by providing widely available, authorized downloads, and with that I'd agree. Still, in the absence of that great system, which HBO certainly doesn't offer, why staunchly state that you're 100% against piracy when you've already said it's helped you survive? I assume that Petrarca likes surviving, but perhaps I'm wrong?

Or, perhaps, the sudden attention that the original story was getting created pressure for him to walk back those statements. Glyn was not the only one that Petrarca reached out to with identical statements:

Perhaps it's possible that, like many in the entertainment industry, Petrarca recognized that infringing copies were, in fact, good for his show, but that actually saying that leads to backlash from within. We've asked Petrarca whether or not he heard from anyone at HBO regarding his original comments, and will update this post accordingly should we hear back.

from the and-why-does-this-keep-happening dept

We've seen plenty of ridiculous stories about bogus DMCA takedowns, but none get so ridiculous as the ones in which the content being demanded taken down is the officially released content. This often happens because of shoddy / clueless middlemen, as is the case with the latest example being passed around. HBO hired DtecNet / MarkMonitor to keep infringing copies of its works offline, and as TorrentFreak notes, the company sought to achieve this by sending a DMCA takedown notice to Google that demanded the removal of links to HBO's own website (as well as links to legitimate sites that included reviews of the show in question, Eastbound and Down).

Again, this kind of thing seems to happen all the time, once again confirming the key point that despite all the talk by maximalists that Google should just "know" when a work is infringing, copyright holders' own representatives have absolutely no clue at all, and that should weigh against the idea that Google or any other third party might magically know.

My real question, though, is just how much is HBO paying DtecNet / MarkMonitor for this "service"? Not only is it making a complete mockery of HBO itself, but potentially killing search engine optimization value that HBO might have towards its legit and authorized content.

Also, isn't it comforting that DtecNet / MarkMonitor are going to be the ones responsible for going after people under the new six strikes program? Stories like this really add confidence to the idea that they're going to make a complete mess of the whole thing.

from the bake-a-bigger-pie dept

As surely as iPods will continue to outsell wax cylinders, the film and television industries are moving online. Really, the whole distinction of media that "is" or "isn't" online will sound ridiculous within a generation, and today's awkwardness is just an unavoidable transitional phase. Reluctance and momentum are keeping legacy structures intact, but in an increasingly ersatz manner that guarantees lots of anxiety at the big TV networks and movie studios. AVClub editor Todd VanDerWerff saw the signs everywhere during the recent Television Critics Association winter press tour:

For years, people who write about TV have been wondering just what the tipping point would be, when DVR usage, online streaming, and pirated viewing of TV broadcasts would become so significant that networks would essentially have to invent a new business model. The networks aren't at that point yet, but they're so close that everybody's talking about it with great confidence, as if the Internet hasn't thrown a great fear of the unknown into their souls. There's still far more money to be made in the old model, the sort of money that can still afford to produce big, ambitious shows like Revolution, as opposed to smaller-scale things like reality series and multi-camera sitcoms, than there is to be made under any new model. But the tipping point is almost here.

Is it ever. The news of big things happening with online service providers, especially Netflix, never stops pouring in. Though traditional analysts might recommend Disney start a cold war with Netflix, the companies instead recently entered an exclusive partnership to stream lots of content from Disney, Pixar and Marvel. There's only one part of that sentence I wish I didn't have to type: exclusive. It's a word that pops up all too much in recent news about evolving TV and movie business models.

Netflix has been stockpiling exclusive original content, including a lot of potential hits like the revival of Arrested Development, a new drama starring Kevin Spacey, a murder mystery produced by Eli Roth, a new Ricky Gervais series and more — all on top of deals like the one with Disney. Then there's the infamously closed-off HBO and its hoard of ultra-popular shows that can't be accessed without a full cable package plus an HBO subscription (and which also happen to be among the most pirated shows). HBO recently reached its own exclusive agreement, this time with Universal — to air the studio's films and keep them off of Netflix, along with the rest of the HBO catalogue. For at least ten years.

Paul Tassi has a good grasp on what this move really represents:

I think people are missing the larger idea of what's happening here, and that's HBO becoming the closest thing Netflix has to a direct competitor. The groundwork is already in place with the aforementioned Go service. Add in exclusive access to movies from all those studios, and $15 a month for HBO Go starts looking nearly as appealing as $15 a month for Netflix.

Basically, HBO is betting against cord-cutting, but also trying to compete in the online space, assuming that most people will keep their cable and pay extra for exclusive content plus digital access to that content. I can see that being true for a while (lots of people have both cable and Netflix), but it makes no sense in the long run. Eventually, HBO will be forced to offer some sort of online-only subscription.

But will even that be enough? Here's where we get back to the exclusivity problem. All these exclusive deals are serving to fragment a market that doesn't yet have clearly defined rules for delivery. Exclusivity is a great thing for creators to sell, and a great thing for businesses to leverage, but in this transitional phase for distribution models, it's harming everyone involved by making sure piracy retains its biggest advantage: comprehensive access. Networks have always had exclusive shows, but they all ended up in the same place — your television, delivered through a single antenna. Then later you needed not just an antenna, but a cable, to get everything. Then later you needed to pay more for specific cable channels to get certain shows — and lo and behold, those shows were among the first and most widely pirated.

The knee jerk reaction to piracy's unflagging popularity is to assume that, as the mantra goes, "people just want everything for free." But as the evidence that pirates buy more media has continued to pile up, that idea has been stripped of its credibility.

As some people have been pointing out for years, piracy's real advantage lies elsewhere: convenience, selection and availability. Piracy is currently the fullest realization of the internet's potential as a culture-machine: virtually any movie, any TV series, any song, any obscure documentary or bootlegged live performance, all accessible to anyone. No need to subscribe to multiple different providers; no release windows or geographical barriers. The fact is that no other means of obtaining media has matched piracy in terms of sheer selection and accessibility, so naturally it has never gone away, even though it has many significant flaws like spammy sites and spotty quality control.

I'm not saying everyone should hand everything to Netflix — only that service providers, studios, networks and everyone else involved need to employ a little game theory and figure out how to move the business forward to everyone's benefit. This means partnerships that allow more sharing of content, new infrastructures that make delivery and payment more seamless, and the undeniably challenging elimination of geographical restrictions and other obsolete licensing concerns. As the world moves away from the captive audience and towards a culture of infinite choice, expecting people who want comprehensive access to buy multiple different subscriptions from multiple different companies is tragically foolish. The culture machine has been built; pirates shouldn't be the only ones using it properly.

from the at-this-point,-the-content-providers-are-being-deliberately-obtuse dept

Many, many posts and discussions have taken place here at Techdirt about content providers and their love of windowed releases. A point frequently made is that there would likely be a lot less piracy and a lot more purchasing if these 30/60/90 day rental/PPV/premium cable windows were eliminated on new releases. Another frequent target are premium cable providers and their original offerings, which suffer from long delays between original airings and their appearance on retail shelves.

Realistically, nobody’s going to stop you from pirating it, but you can’t argue that you’re justified in pirating it. Admit it: you’re ripping it off, it’s morally questionable at best (and illegal), but you don’t care. You’re pirating a TV show because you don’t want to pay for it or wait for it to become available in the ways you want. You’re not making any kind of statement or participating in a movement — you’re just being cheap and/or impatient. If you don’t have the fortitude to cope with that, then don’t pirate.

If you want to hit cable companies, HBO, etc. where it hurts — if you truly want to send a message that there’s unmet demand they should be addressing — don’t watch their shows. At all. Don’t even pirate them. Don’t blog or tweet or face (?) about how good they are. Just don’t watch them.

That’s a real statement. And if enough people do it, that movement will effect change.

There's a questionable moral argument in there, but the troublesome part is in the second paragraph. Not watching a show doesn't send the message that there's unmet demand. It sends the message there's very little or no demand, which is exactly the wrong message to send if you're trying to motivate HBO, etc. to either speed up its delivery system or offer a la carte service.

Actually, piracy does make a statement — it’s just the wrong statement. If you truly want to pressure content providers to adapt new distribution channels, and you’re not just trying to justify getting everything for free, piracy is hurting your cause.

Most geeks try to justify piracy because the content isn’t available on our terms. We can’t get it in our country, we can’t get it as quickly as we want, it costs more than we want to pay, we can’t get it on the device we want, or we can’t get it in the format we want. Publishers have a distribution problem.

But when publishers see widespread piracy of their content, they don’t see the distribution problem. They think they have a piracy problem.

Ament is right. HBO, et al have a distribution problem. But simply refusing to watch or purchase the content sends two messages, neither of which will result in an overhaul of the distribution system. (The following uses HBO as an example, but it could any major motion picture studio, premium cable service or other distributor. But, HBO is the most pirated.)

1. If viewership falls or purchases drop off, HBO may decide there's no viable market for these programs and simply stop making them. This protects HBO's bottom line, but it does nothing for its future endeavors as it's drawing the wrong conclusions from the data.

2. HBO may simply view the dropoff to be the result of piracy rather than "viewer opt-out" and resort to the actions mentioned by Arment, including pushes for more anti-piracy legislation as well as limiting its exposure through increasingly onerous DRM or windowing.

Because piracy will never be nonexistent, it's impossible to create a control group that includes only potential purchasers of HBO's content. The only course of action left is for HBO is to experiment with faster turnaround and price reductions and see if these "forced pirates" are willing to put their money where their torrent is. To date, HBO has been unwilling to do this, at least in the US. Other premium cable companies have drastically reduced the turnaround of their shows and HBO itself offers a standalone streaming service in northern Europe, both in an effort to combat piracy. As its stands now, HBO's contracts with cable providers are far too lucrative to consider changing up its release strategy by going a la carte or trimming down the wait between debut and retail, at least not on a larger scale.

The problem with price/window experimentation is that altering these two factors in order to convert more pirates into viewers and purchasers will make cable companies extremely unhappy. HBO may find that it does very well with faster/cheaper releases but it won't ease its relationship with its most lucrative customers (at this point): cable companies. They already worry about cord-cutting and it's quite possible that current contracts prohibit HBO from undercutting its core market, which isn't viewers, but cable providers.

What piracy does do, regardless of "morality" or "making a statement" or anything else along those lines, is indicate demand. The content providers know people are watching their offerings, many times without paying. What they have to do is make the determination as to whether that audience is worth pursuing. At this point, many seem to believe it isn't. Very few companies have made any moves to drastically alter the artificial limits of the supply chain in order to capture some of the "un-monetized" market.

As Arment points out, the "half-empty" view of the content glass usually results in legislation and litigation rather than any serious attempts to solve the distribution problem. Pirating because you're "forced" into it simply feeds into these companies' dim view of the online market. But, unless these companies begin experimenting with the distribution process, there's no way to gauge the conversion rate. Doing things the way they've always been done will keep the status quo -- and people will continue to exercise the option to get the content on their own schedule.

So, Arment's right: pirating because of distribution limitations will continue to send the "piracy problem" message to HBO, Showtime, etc. While other companies view pirates as underserved customers, the movie and TV industries seem stuck viewing piracy as only a problem, rather than an opportunity. Trying to hit them in the wallet by refusing to watch or purchase will send the same message (because piracy will continue to be a "thing") -- piracy is hurting sales/viewership -- or worse, that the audience no longer exists.

This screwed up situation can't be solved by asking viewers to sit on their hands and wait patiently for a better distribution system, no more than it can be solved by having every ridiculous delay greeted by visits to The Pirate Bay. But only one of these actions indicates unmet demand.

from the lessons-learned dept

Yesterday, Louis CK announced the seemingly impossible: his next comedy special will air on HBO, and also be available as a DRM-free download like his revolutionary Beacon Theatre show. Yes, even the network so infamous for its tight grip on content that fans have literally begged it to take their money can't ignore the overwhelming success of CK's open, inexpensive, highly accessible approach to content distribution.

So far there aren't many details on the arrangement, except that the DRM-free option will cost $5 and be available on CK's website "a few months" after the initial HBO airing. Now, of course, this is the very definition of a "release window" and thus far from a perfect situation, but it's still an astonishing step (in the right direction) for the notoriously controlling HBO. Traditionally, the network's content has only been available to cable subscribers or, much later, on physical media and in major digital media stores like iTunes — despite countless fans asking for an affordable, timely standalone digital option.

As we have often said, there is still lots of room for the traditional "middlemen" of the entertainment industry if they act as enablers and not as gatekeepers. While HBO is still keeping the gate by windowing the release, this move shows that they may be beginning to recognize the change in their role: they are highly experienced at producing comedy specials and can do a lot to enable even the most talented and self-sufficient comedians — but they wouldn't be able to strike a deal with someone like Louis CK if they insisted on having total control over the final product, since he's already clearly demonstrated that he doesn't need them for that. Indeed, if you compare this to Trent Reznor's new non-traditional label deal, it seems like we are seeing the beginnings of a trend: artists who have struck out on their own and succeeded are now bringing the lessons they've learned back to the big gatekeepers, and using their cultural clout and their proof-of-concept experiments to change the way business is done. That's encouraging, and exciting — for all the protestations from industry incumbents that they are trying to save artists, it may end up being smart artists who save the incumbents.